Today's guest post is by a friend and fellow blogger, Professor Beej. When he's not writing awesome geekery over at his blog he's busy writing fiction. Not only does he have a serial novel in the works but he has an ongoing Kickstarter for his cross-genre novel, Birthright. That's what I asked him to talk about today.

I
love pop culture and geek media. Love it. I love the stories, the settings, the
themes, the characters, all of it--and because of that, my novel Birthrightis the exactly the
kind of book I’d want to read.

Now
hear me out. I’m not saying that in a self-aggrandizing or egotistical kind of
way; I’m just saying that so that you get an idea of what kind of book it is.
Because if you’re a pop culture fanatic like me, I think there’s something in Birthright
for you, too.

In
fact, I think there’s a lot of somethings in Birthright for you. You
see, when Void asked me for a guest post about media influences, I thought it
would be easy. After all, I describe the book as Ender’s Game meets The
Lord of the Rings.

But
as I really started writing about and digging into these pop culture and geek
media influences, the more I realized how indebted I am to these works. Because
without them my work wouldn’t exist. Couldn’t exist.

And
so, in no particular order, I’ve narrowed down 5 major (non-MMO)
media influences on Birthright.

Firefly

Let
me just get this one out there. You can’t really talk about cross-genre fiction
without starting with Firefly. Joss Whedon’s cult-masterpiece is far too
ingrained in the popular geek consciousness to avoid. So what role exactly did Firefly
play in Birthright’s creation?

Well,
primarily, I was able to look at Firefly to see the perfect example of
worldbuilding. The Western conventions were never explicitly explained any more
than the science-fiction ones were. They don’t explain why there are
cattle-rustlers in space; there just are.

So
in Birthright, I didn’t think it was necessary to explain why there are
SF trappings like holograms and laser guns in a fantasy world. There just are.
That’s just the world of Erlon.

Star
Wars

I
almost didn’t include Star Wars on this list of influences because it’s
almost a cliche to say that Star Wars influenced me as a science-fiction
writer. Because Star Wars has influenced every single science-fiction
writer since 1977 in one way or another.

But
what kind of part? Well, that’s kind of hard to pin down because Star Wars
kind of permeates our popular consciousness. It’s SF with a hero growing
up, mysticism and pseudomagic, and an underlying theme of inherent ambiguity in
good and evil.

And,
like one of my readers pointed out, the villain even has the initials DV. Which
I swear to you was unintentional.

Lord
of the Rings

What’s
a fantasy novel without an epic quest, right?

Tolkien
did a lot for literature. Maybe even more than you realize. Not only was he the
great-grandaddy of the high-fantasy quest and more genre conventions than we
can shake a trope at, but he’s also the reason that us English teachers make
students read Beowulf.

That’s
right. Tolkien’s essay on the now-classic poem
claimed that the important aspects of the poem weren’t the histories, but the
monsters.

I
love that idea, so I wanted to expand on it by bringing “the monsters” in Birthright
to the forefront. In Birthright, the villain actually gets PoV chapters
instead of being hidden away in a dark tower somewhere or presented through the
goody-goody bias of the hero.

Ender’s
Game

When
I read Ender’s Game for the first time, I was struck by the idea of
Battle School. I just loved the concept beind an isolated, high-tech academy
for training the soldiers of tomorrow.

So
in Birthright, I have the Inkwell Sigil, a ship traveling through
the space between Instances, a ship separated quite literally from anything and
everything else, where newly recruited technomages are trained for their
service in the Archive.

Plus,
as a different kind of homage to OSC and what he did with Battle School, the
story starts out at Ennd’s Academy and circles back there from time to time.

Harry
Potter

The
Harry Potter series, like Ender’s Game, influenced Birthright
with its unique take on a school setting. Nothing in my series is a direct
parallel to Hogwarts, so put that out of your mind. Instead, I wanted Ennd’s
Academy and the Inkwell Sigil and all other locations in the novel to feel
like Hogwarts.

Remember
how it felt to read the scene where Harry first enters the Great Hall and sees
the enchanted ceiling? Remember that sense of wonder?

That’s
what I am going for in Birthright. I wanted a sense of awe and wonder
about the setting from the very beginning. And not just from the readers. I
wanted the characters to experience that awe and wonder, too. Be sure to check
out the
sample chapters of Birthright and judge for yourself how well
I did.

Others?

Obviously.
After a life of geekdom, I know there are tons of others out there. From Stargate
SG-1 to Michael Crichton’s Prey to Herbert’s Dune to pretty
much anything that’s ever appeared in a SyFy original movie. It’s all inBirthright. Somehow.

Because
there are no new stories. Just old stories told in new ways. And I think my new
way is pretty freaking awesome.

B.J. Keeton is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for Birthright, the firstbook in The Technomage Archive series. He is is a writer, blogger, and teacher. When he isn’t trying to think of a way to trick Fox into putting Firefly back on the air, he writes science fiction, watches an obscene amount of genre television, and is always on the lookout for new ways to integrate pop culture into the classroom. B.J. lives in a small town in Tennessee with his wife and a neighborhood of stray cats, and he blogs about pop culture, geek media, and awesomeness at professorbeej.com.